


In Your Place

by Dee_Laundry



Category: House M.D.
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-05-13
Updated: 2009-05-13
Packaged: 2017-10-14 14:14:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/150067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dee_Laundry/pseuds/Dee_Laundry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dr. Wilson's assistant calls you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Your Place

**Author's Note:**

> Set the day after episode 5-24. One non-specific spoiler for that episode. Thanks to Early Readers for support.

That nice young woman whose name you can never remember calls you to cancel your appointment with Dr. Wilson. “Family emergency,” she says, and offers to have you meet with another doctor.

Tears are lumping in your throat, hot pebbles. You don’t want another doctor. You’ve had cancer for more than six months, been to more offices and centers and hospitals than you want to remember, and Dr. Wilson is the first oncologist who really looked you in the eye. Not that the others weren’t competent, weren’t nice. But cancer was their _job_ , and you sensed that, and Dr. Wilson is different.

Alan takes the phone from your hand as you try to remember who Dr. Wilson’s family is. You’ve chatted; he knows about your daughters, your husband, your cat who won’t ever shut up. He’s told you about... nobody. No wife (you asked), no kids (you didn’t have to ask). Maybe it’s his mother.

“Is it his mother?” you ask Alan, who’s still on the phone. “Ask her if it’s his mother.”

Alan smiles at you, chuckles almost silently. “She’s not going to tell me, hon. It’s none of our business.”

It isn’t any of your business, true, but you want to know. You want to know who could be so important as to take your place. If it’s not his child or spouse, if it’s not a parent, then who? Who?

“I re-scheduled for later,” Alan says. The phone’s back on the hook. Your cheeks are wet, but your eyes are dry. “With a Dr. Fitzgerald.” His hand is heavy on your head, loud over your ear where it’s rubbing.

“Get off me!” you bark, and take off for the bedroom.

He’s kind to you, your husband of fifteen years, but he still doesn’t know when not to touch you. He can’t see when the air around you is charged and simply having clothing and air on your skin is almost too much for you to stand.

Dr. Wilson seems to know. Dr. Wilson doesn’t grab you, the way Alan does at all the wrong times. He doesn’t do the bear hug thing that Dr. Thray did, doesn’t do the concerned cluck that Dr. Corrigan did, always in your space, in your face. Dr. Wilson lets you breathe. He’s just there. When that’s all you can stand, he’s just there.

You thanked him when he said the cancer hadn’t gone into remission the way they’d hoped it would. Obviously you weren’t grateful for the cancer, for this thing that’s taken over your life, the thing that might take you from your girls, but you thanked him. Because he seemed to know who you were and what you needed.

You think you might be in love with him a little. In a movie-star kind of way. It’s stupid. You’ve only met him twice.

“Hon,” Alan says from the doorway of the bedroom, quiet with a hint of sadness, so you apologize. “I just –” he says, and stops.

Your heart swells, the burn of muscles stretching, because he tries. Alan tries, and even when he gets it wrong, when you get it wrong, he loves you.

Hands to his shoulders, to the back of his neck, to his hair. “I love you,” you say. “Thank you.”

His smile is just the right amount of bright. His arms are too tight around you, laying across your ribs at the wrong angle, but that’s OK. He tries, and he loves you, and he’s there. He’s scared, for himself, for you, but he hasn’t left yet.

He can make you laugh when you’d rather scream. He holds your hair when you vomit, and listens to every scary thought you’ve ever had, and doesn’t mind that you’ve always been a mess.

You hope Dr. Wilson’s family feels the same way about him.


End file.
